


Moonlight

by Sunhawk16



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: M/M, POV Duo Maxwell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 06:31:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12978120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunhawk16/pseuds/Sunhawk16





	Moonlight

I wonder sometimes if earth people… you know; people born and raised on earth… are disappointed the first time they go into space and see the moon? I mean, I know how I felt the first time I saw the moon from the earth, sort of… wow, it’s not just a rock! So it kind of stands to reason to me that seeing it from the other side for the first time would be a major let down.

Not that we don’t have some other pretty cool things to look at out there, but that’s not the point. 

The moon. It means so much more down here… Mother moon, they call it, and there are more legends wrapped up in the thing than you’d think possible. There aren’t any legends about the moon on the colonies. No myths. No nicknames. It’s just a rock. A big rock, I suppose, but a rock all the same. 

When I was a kid at the orphanage, there was this book. Looking back, I’m a little surprised that it was in the library there at all, considering the subject matter, but Father always did have a soft spot for art. 

It was a beautiful thing, full of pictures of fairies and gnomes and all manner of fanciful creatures. And almost all of the pictures showed them in the light of the moon. That magical, gorgeous full moon. It had taken me a long time to figure out that the moon in the pictures was the same one that I could see from the observation decks. 

I couldn’t believe it. I remember scoffing at the very notion and Sister laughing, and trying to explain it to me. But there just wasn’t any magic in the moon of the colonies. 

And I had wanted very badly to believe in the magic. Wanted to believe in something better… more beautiful… something pure and innocent. 

Is it silly that of all the things I might have brought with me from the colonies, from my childhood… that need to believe in the magic was still with me?

Silly… or just sad? 

‘Duo, what are you doing?’

Well… how totally embarrassing. I had not heard Heero’s car pull up out front. 

‘Uh… looking at the moon?’ I ventured, not able to see him where he must still be standing on my back steps, without twisting myself around like a pretzel. 

There was a bit of a snort and the sound of his shoe scuffing as he stepped down to the walk. ‘You needed to lie down flat on your back in the back yard to do that?’ he questioned, sounding amused.

‘Well… it was easier than craning my neck up,’ I replied. I thought about getting up, but that seemed somewhat like admitting I wasn’t really doing anything to begin with. 

‘And being half dressed is helping your neck?’ he prodded, that amusement stepping up a notch. I frowned. 

‘Maybe I’m moon bathing.’

There was a short little bark of a laugh, and nothing for a moment while I thought I heard him sit down on the step. ‘Moon bathing, huh? This is… new.’

I tried not to squirm, imagining him sitting back there laughing at me. I’d have gotten up if it wouldn’t have just seemed defensive. ‘Well… it’s a full moon and all.’

‘It is that,’ he conceded and he was quiet for a minute. I wondered if he were looking up at the moon too.

‘Did it surprise you?’ I asked him suddenly. ‘The first time you saw it?’

I was taken aback when his voice softened a bit, and it didn’t feel so much like he was laughing at me. ‘I’d seen pictures, but… no, it didn’t quite prepare me for the real thing.’

‘It looks so dead from space,’ I mused, raising my arm up to spread my hand across the surface of the shining thing, my finger-tips aligning with the curve of the edge. ‘But down here… it’s like… like…’ I stumbled on the word, but couldn’t bring myself to say it. 

‘What?’ he asked gently when I stopped. 

‘Never mind,’ I mumbled and suddenly found myself sitting up, my knees pulled tight to my bare chest, feeling… pretty damn dumb.

I half expected him to just go on back in the house and leave me to my silly sky gazing, but after a few moments I heard a rustle and then he stood. I was surprised when he settled to the ground behind me. 

‘Japanese legend says that Tsuki-Yomi is the God of the moon,’ he said, and I blinked up at the object in question.

‘God?’ I asked. ‘But… don’t they call it Mother Moon?’

‘In some cultures,’ he said, and I could feel the movement of a shrug, the ghost of a hint of his body heat. It made me shiver. 

‘You have grass on your back,’ was all the warning I got before his hand was brushing across my skin and I think I forgot how to inhale. I sat… very still. ‘So… just what is the moon like here?’ he asked while I was thinking entirely too hard about something else.

‘M… magic,’ I blurted, and hoped he hadn’t heard the odd yearning in my voice. I tried to cover it, clearing my throat and trying again. ‘You just hear people call it that. Magical.’

His hand was still brushing at what must have been some damn stubborn grass, and the heat of it was still making it hard for me to concentrate on the conversation. ‘You do hear people call it that. Especially the full moon. And, I suppose midnight on the first day of spring would be particularly… magical.’

I wondered if he could sense the heat from the blush that I could feel washing over me. Guess the whole silly, stupid thing was a bit more obvious than I would have thought. How… very embarrassing. 

‘I… suppose,’ I muttered, trying for nonchalant and I’m surprised he didn’t just laugh right out loud. I became aware that his hand had stopped moving and was resting lightly against me, gently cupping the curve of my shoulder. I shivered again and his other hand joined the first. 

‘Are you cold, Duo?’ he asked, his voice somehow very damn close and little more than a whisper. 

‘A little… I suppose,’ I confessed, waiting for him to tease me about my half-dressed state. 

‘Come here then,’ he murmured, and if I’d had a voice, I completely lost it when he pulled me back against his chest. Though I think I made a somewhat unmanly sound when I felt bare skin instead of the fabric of his shirt. 

‘H… Heero?’ I squeaked, and I swear the asshole chuckled at my tone. 

‘When in Rome…’ he teased, letting the thought hang there unfinished.

There were things I should have been thinking about, like what he was doing at my place to begin with. Like where his shirt had gone. Like what the hell he was doing with his hands rubbing up and down my arms. But the very gesture was making it kind of hard to think about much of anything. Making it kind of hard to remember my own name.

‘What… what are you…?’ I began, but couldn’t remember the rest of it. It was weird to feel the sound of his chuckle vibrating in his chest. 

‘Call it moon-madness,’ he whispered, so close that his breath stirred the fine hairs at my temple.

Moon-madness; that would explain a lot… except maybe which of us was mad. I shuddered suddenly, wondering what would happen when the moon went away. I was still struggling with getting my head around what he was doing… and I was already afraid of losing it. 

Which was just stupid because I didn’t half know what ‘it’ was.  
‘Magic doesn’t just happen, you know kougetsu,’ he told me and his voice was all deep and breathy and altogether not like I’d ever heard Heero sound. 

A cloud drifted across the face of the moon then, and there was this moment of… stillness. This moment of sharp clarity and sudden doubt and harsh fear and overwhelming longing all jumbled up together somewhere in my chest and I very suddenly needed to turn around and see him. Needed to know it was really, really him and not just some of that moon-madness. 

‘Heero?’ I breathed, and he let me turn even though I’d been afraid he wouldn’t. Had been afraid… of I wasn’t even sure what. 

His smile, just a tiny bit less sure than his voice had been, was enough. 

‘Sometimes,’ he said, his voice still just as husky and warm. ‘You have to make the magic happen.’

I didn’t tell him that he was infinitely more appealing than mere magic, just tilted my head up to meet his when he leaned down to kiss me. 

Maybe there is some magic to be found by moon-light.


End file.
